Certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association as a Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and as military fitness trainer, Stew has trained hundreds of students for Navy SEAL, Special Forces, SWAT, FBI, ERT and many other public safety professions.

His articles can help you achieve your fitness goals, whether you’re a beginner or advanced.

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One of my favorite things to do is to workout in the AM and PM. I find often due to my schedule that a tough workout needs to be split into to different workouts in the same day.

Here is the question posed:

“I would like to know if when I workout in the morning at home, on the days I work out, could I do some more workout routines at the office? By doing more exercises at the office after my initial work out, does this hamper the rebuilding of the torn muscle fibers that occur from the first work out? Do my muscles need all the time they can get to recover from each workout? Any info would be greatly appreciated!”

I have found over the years, this type of split routine works well to burn additional calories in the day and help speed up the metabolism in the evening when it naturally tends to slow down. There are some rules to the two-a-day workout however:

1) Recovery is Important – You have to be creative if you do a two-a-day routine. You should either split your cardio exercise from your weights or PT exercises, or do a combination of cardio/stretching and PT in the morning and weights in the evening. If you do exercises like pushups and bench presses in the same day, either do them together in the same workout, or be careful not to do AM pushups and PM bench press for too many weeks in succession. Once a week, it is OK to push your body this way and basically do two chest workouts in the same day, but take at least two days off from repeating those exercises again. And – do your pushups in the AM and bench in the PM since bench press weights will be more stressful on your muscle fibers if lifting heavy weights. You are right – you do need to recover.

2) Leg PT is Different – I would definitely only do leg workouts once a day, though I would not count a run or bike as a leg workout, but as a cardio workout. So on leg days, I like to do the PT or weights first, then workout the lactic acid produced by a jog, bike or elliptical glide later in the day if you must split the workouts in two.

3) Morning Workout Meal – If you are doing cardio in the AM, it is important to drink water prior to exercise. If you are lifting weights or doing challenging PT or pushing the speed of your run and doing intervals or speed workouts, you may want to have fruit or a sport drink prior to running, just to boost your glycogen levels. In high intensity workouts, you may feel dizzy, nauseated, or weak when you run low on your immediate energy source — glycogen. After your morning workout, replenish your glycogen levels with fruits like bananas, strawberries, apples etc. Also protein should be consumed in the post-workout meal to help rebuild the muscles and speed recovery.

Ideas for workouts that you can split in the day can be found in any of the eBooks at the FireLink.com eBook Store, but here are a few examples:

These are just some of the many ways to split up your routine into a challenging two-a-day workout plan that will get you in great shape and help you lose weight by jump starting your metabolism a second time in the day.